Telecommunications systems use a variety of different communications protocols to provide telephony services. In particular, integrated services digital network (ISDN) communications may use any number of different protocol variants. A common telephony switch may support all different variations of ISDN signaling using an ISDN protocol stack. The ISDN stack contains information for processing ISDN signals using any appropriate protocol variant.
The widespread use of telecommunications devices in a variety of different environments has led to a proliferation of different ISDN protocol variants. For example, different countries often use different ISDN protocol variants, and companies have developed variants for their own switching platforms. The result is an increasing number of different ISDN variants. As the number of variations grows, so too does the size and complexity of the ISDN stack. As the size and complexity of the ISDN stack grows, the switch running the stack becomes more difficult to maintain and update.